


The Witness

by VinegarWaffles



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28584600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VinegarWaffles/pseuds/VinegarWaffles
Summary: I worked on making my own episode of TMA with a little twist. I have Archivist!Sasha brainrot and love Desolation!Tim so here they are i suppose.[CONTENT WARNINGS: In depth descriptions of The Beholding, Scary Themes, Body Horror, Eyes, Parental Neglect, Sleep Paralysis]credit to Rusty Quill and Jonathan Sims for making TMA, and credit to my friend hound for inspiration to write this and these specific iterations of King!Magnus and Desolation!Tim
Relationships: Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Kudos: 4





	The Witness

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Magnus Archives](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/738636) by Jonathan Sims, Rusty Quill. 



[TIM:]  
This it?

[SASHA:]  
The panopticon… yeah.

[TIM:]  
Anticlimactic if you ask me.

[SASHA:]  
Well to be fair the stairs were unexpected. Especially so many of them.

[TIM:]  
And the tapes?

[SASHA:]  
I’ve been to some weird houses in my college days. Walls made from cassettes really isn’t too strange.

[TIM:]  
Cool.

[SASHA:]  
Oh, lighten up hothead. Just a… brief… well, maybe not brief. Okay. Only a walk up an extremely tall spiral staircase, then the pinnacle of our existences waits for us to beat his ass.

[TIM:]  
First and last blows are mine, remember that.

[FIRE CRACKLES]

[SASHA:]  
I couldn’t forget if I tried, sadly. Everything you’ve ever said to me is stuck in my head forever. A shame.

[TIM (SARCASTICALLY):]  
Woah my hands are moving by themselves. Oh no. Two birds, pointing right at you.

[SASHA:]  
Love you too.

[TIM:]  
Suppose the tapes have anything on ‘em?

[SASHA:]  
I think that’s the first time you’ve asked a question without being prompted beforehand, I’m so proud. I guess there’s only one way to find out…

[TIM:]  
We’re in for it now.

[SASHA:]  
Hush up for a second, this one reads “Statement of Albian Lukas, regarding their experiences with sleep paralysis. Statement taken October 21st, 2009.”

[TIM (FAKING ENTHUSIASM):]  
Wooow. I don’t care.

[SASHA:]  
AHEM. Recording by Sasha James, The Archivist. Statement begins…

[RECORDED MALE VOICE FROM CASSETTE:]  
I don’t remember coming here. I just- I think I just woke up here. Or… was I always here? Have I ever left? It all blurs together, I can’t think properly. I… I haven’t slept in almost a week. I will see them again, and I don’t want to… no, I can’t see them again. It all started happening a month ago? Maybe a few weeks… I don’t know. I’ll try my best to explain but before I do you need to promise me you will listen. I am not crazy, I am not delusional, I don’t need to be thrown in any mental hospital. I just want you to listen and believe me.

I’ve always had issues with sleeping, it’s genetic. I think my mother had narcolepsy, or some variation of sleep deficit disorder. My father was prone to night terrors and slept walked, most often than not it was too often for comfort. Sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night to hear him screaming about how “The walls saw him” or something cryptic like that. I feared him growing up. He wasn’t a kind man, but he also wasn’t one to be scared. Hearing his blood curdling scream always sent a shiver up my spine, I wish I could unhear it. When you put these two together you get one child that has too many issues related to sleep. So, you can imagine my fright when my first instance of sleep paralysis occurred.

I’m not scared easily, I watch horror movies at three in the morning, solely for the fun of it. I indulge in the paranormal like popcorn at the cinema, I relish in its cryptic lore. I wasn’t scared of anything growing up either, except for my father of course, other than eyes. Something about them just… put me off a tad in the wrong direction. I don’t like the anatomy, the symbolism, and of course… its function. I don’t like that people can see me. I find myself less than attractive, worthless even, but that doesn’t stop them from looking. No matter what you do, you can never truly get someone to stop looking, without removing the eye entirely. Even as a child I knew this harsh reality, I knew the inescapable terror they held deep within their icy gaze. You could throw me in a suffocating pit of worms, and I would embrace it, a dark room was no problem, a skin stealing clown was another walk in the park… but eyes… that was a different story entirely.

As I lay there, slowly opening my eyes, I couldn’t move. I tried moving my arms, my legs, nothing. I figured I was just tired, so due to it being a Saturday night, I tried going back to sleep. That’s when I realized I couldn’t shut my eyes. They were glued open, as if someone was holding them with all their might. I wasn’t blinking, my eyes burned, but no tears came to aid it. I felt like running, screaming, crying, anything… but no relief came. I just lay there unblinking, unmoving, for hours. Once the sun found its way through my windows, I found myself able to blink once again. I remember how scared I was, my dad was drunk and tried to tell me it was just a nightmare, but it couldn’t have been. I felt it. I felt the burning for hours. I heard the deafening silence that my cries couldn’t pierce. I didn’t forget what I saw, I never shook the feeling of being watched. From that moment on, I never had another instance of sleep-related problems. I had a falling out with my parents, I moved out. I went to college, got some lovely partners in the meantime. All throughout this though, I had no sleep issues. I don’t even think I had a nightmare.

Last month, at least I think it was last month, I moved in with my partners. They live not even a street down from my childhood home, which I acknowledged, but didn’t care much regardless. My parents disowned me for being myself, so they were nothing to me but a distant memory of who gave birth to me. It was odd for a while, avoiding driving past where my parents still live, though soon I got over it. The house is nice, the decorations and intricate details all flow together in such a harmonious way. My life was good now, finally it was something I saw worth doing. Despite my hardships, I prevailed, and was living my best life… that is… until I got the second one.

My partners were out of town, two were partying together and the other one was at a family reunion, and I opted to stay home. I cozied up in my bed with our dog, Beebop. Beebop is our old Chow Chow dog. We got them at a shelter the spring before and we fell in love. They laid their head on my chest as I drifted off to sleep. When I awoke, I tried rolling over to check the time… I couldn’t move. Panic instantly started setting in, I tried moving my fingers, my toes, my arms, my anything. That’s the moment I realized I couldn’t blink. My eyes never teared up as they slowly dried out, just a sickening silence that fills every gap of speech. The silence that plagues the dead, it was all around me, and I was left to suffer within the coffin that was my body. My gaze slowly looked down to Beebop, and they were looking at me. It was almost like they knew what I was thinking, like they just knew I was awake. Their eyes were wide open, fur no longer obscuring their eyes. Their usual eye colour must’ve been obscured in the dark, because I could’ve sworn, they were green. After a while of staring, they barked, and I was able to move again.

Each night since that night, the same thing would happen. I wouldn’t be able to blink, move, anything. Until the last one I had… the one that will forever keep me awake. I woke up, I couldn’t blink, I caught that right off the bat. I panicked as I looked to my partners and dog, all wide awake with glowing green eyes. They were all silent and staring directly at me. That’s when I sneezed… I could move. The familiar burn of my eyes drying out jolted me so intensely… that I could move? Getting up and out of bed was harder than I’d imagined, I could feel each of my bones pop and crackle as I tiptoed across the frigid floor of my bedroom. The eyes of my partners, the eyes of my dog, the eyes of the paintings… they followed me. No matter which way I moved I couldn’t escape their gaze… though they never actually moved. Everything outside of my room was covered in a thick layer of dust, like no one has moved in a long time. I opened the fridge and I was met with the foul stench of rotting food, a quick glance at the rotting food revealed something I didn’t want to see. Spaghetti and meatballs didn’t have meatballs… they were eyes and they were watching me. Everything in the fridge wasn’t food, only a million peering eyes that couldn’t stop watching. I shut the fridge with a jolt of pure adrenaline, that’s when I decided to get the hell out of there.

The door was jammed, so I took the fire escape down into the alley beside the building. The pavement was cool on my bare feet, and damp from the small sprinkling of rain. I saw a sight that was wrong, it was so wrong it’s hard to put into words. So, with this knowledge, please don’t think I’m crazy. It was London, but not the way you and I know it, it was different. My flat had somehow moved to central London while I was asleep, so my view from the alley… well, I could see all of London; or rather, what used to be London. I saw eyes in the sky, giant, peering, unblinking eyes. Too many eyes to count, it seemed like any time I tried to count them more appeared. Big Ben was crumbling, held together with wires and cameras, but the face wasn’t a clock. It was an eye, and it was staring right at me. Shambling masses of wires and cameras moved about, their voices no more than a mix of camera shudders and screams. The weirdest thing though… was this place.

The Magnus Institute looked to be half-destroyed and stretched upwards for what seemed like forever. The walls were almost black, resembling obsidian or onyx, though something about me said it was nothing but glass. This spire towered over anything else in the entirety of this warped London. Looking up at it was hard, if not for its sheer size, for its incomprehensibility. I knew that tower was there but… my brain still couldn’t understand it. It was shrouded in some veil of mystery that I just couldn’t begin to comprehend the size of this building. The cameras wouldn’t stop looking at me as I headed to it… getting in my face and blinding me with their flashes. Stumbling through the rubble of the street was difficult, I didn’t quite know why I was going there either… I just… hoped it would make things right.

Inside was not ideal, a lot of stairs and differing paths I don’t quite remember, though one thing I do remember is them. I don’t quite know what they were but whatever it was… it was not human, not anymore. The figure stood eleven feet tall, comprised of complete blackness. Every drop of light was swallowed up by its body of pure unfiltered void. Around it was tiny floating yellow eyes, too many to count… but they made shapes. The most prominent shape was the few above its head, the eyes were formed in a way that resembled a crown. Over its entire body, wherever the abyss tired, were eyes. The eyes were everywhere, again too many to count. I can’t explain the horror I felt when they all turned to look at me. It told me to kneel, and I did. It told me to come here… It told me to tell you “The King’s watch will never cease. No matter how hard you try”. Then, I woke up. I was in my bed, about an hour after I had gone to bed. I ran here as fast as I could.

[CASSETTE CLICKS OFF]

[SASHA:]  
Statement… ends, I guess. Any thoughts?

[TIM:]  
Jonah.

[SASHA:]  
Yeah, I thought so too.

[TIM (QUIZZICALLY):]  
I thought you could just… know. What happened to that?

[SASHA:]  
I can… It’s just… ugh. It’s bloody Jonah Magnus. I’m pretty sure him and The Eye are one in the same. Same with this place. Every time I try to know something about this place, or him I just… can’t.

[TIM:]  
Cool.

[SASHA (SARCASTICALLY):]  
Positively riveting conversationalist as always, dear.

[TIM:]  
Fuck you too.

[SASHA SNICKERS]

[SASHA:]  
Still quite a ways to the top, wanna talk or something?

[TIM:]  
Not particularly.

[SASHA:]  
Alright. If you need anything, I’m literally just beside you.

[A MOMENT OF SILENCE PASSES]

[TIM:]  
Okay… thank you.

[SASHA:]  
No problem.

[TAPE RECORDER CLICKS OFF]


End file.
